a distorted view of religion

Media Matters’ latest study, “Left Behind,” looks at media preference for conservative religious figures over liberal ones (the full report is here). The study observes that “coverage of religion not only overrepresents some voices and underrepresents others, it does so in a way that is consistently advantageous to conservatives:”

…close to 90 percent of Americans today self-identify as religious, while only 22 percent belong to traditionalist sects. Yet in the cultural war depicted by news media as existing across religious lines, centrist and progressive voices are marginalized or absent altogether. […] Despite the fact most religious Americans are moderate or progressive, in the news media it is overwhelmingly conservative leaders who are presented as the voice of religion. This represents a particularly meaningful distortion since progressive religious leaders tend to focus on different issues and offer an entirely different perspective than their conservative counterparts. [emphasis added]